Entire HDD erased at the beginning of installation

quadmachine · #1 3rd March 2010, 11:59 AM

I just tried installing Fedora 12 and at the beggining of the install i got this message about my disk which cannot be read until it is initialized, and if i initialize it all data on the disk will be lost.
Disk was formated using GUID, and had one HFS+ partition on it.
I accidentaly clicked "yes" on that error message, and after realising what I just did (some 2sec later) i pulled out my computer's power cord out.

Now my entire disk is erased, it has no partitions on it, and all data is lost...

How do i retrieve my data from the erased disk, and why did Fedora want to do this to my disk?

Plz, anybody help, it was a fairly large disk with 500GB of data :/

The moral of the story, don't do anything on your computer while under the flu

cheers!

drunkahol · #2 3rd March 2010, 12:57 PM

Best guess would be to use a partition management distro (GParted or similar) and remove all the partitions that Fedora created. It may not have got far enough to start formatting the drive.

Once you've got something like GParted downloaded & booted, create a new partition table matching what might have been there before. Yes - I know there's a LOT of variables there, but you say it was just one big HFS+ partition. Create one of them starting at the beginning and finishing at the end.

You may have to try a few different options before you can either boot from it again (a 100% success) or even just mount it from another distro.

There'll be quite a bit of guesswork here though - and no small amount of luck needed.

Alternatively, you could send it off to one of these data recovery places.

Cheers

Duncan

quadmachine · #3 3rd March 2010, 01:04 PM

Yeah it was a storage drive, with only one big HFS+ partition. Fedora only deleted my partition, but did not create any new ones (i unplugged the PC from the power cord...)

So you suggest i create the HFS+ partition again and then what, any data recovery software you would recommend? Right now I am scanning the disk using FileSalvage.app on OSX, I haven't yet created the partition again.

I'll see if that results in anything and will report back.

cheers!

drunkahol · #4 3rd March 2010, 01:19 PM

If you create the right partition, you won't need to recover the data as you'll be mounting the same partition in the same way as before. It's getting the partition parameters right that's the issue. If you get them right, you're laughing.

quadmachine · #5 3rd March 2010, 05:13 PM

I solved the problem, i just copied the EFI partition over from my other HDD which is also formated with GUID and has only one big HFS+ partition.

Code:

sudo dd if=/dev/rdisk1 of=/Volumes/iSmetliste/Users/Mladen/Desktop/kurac.bin bs=2048 count=1

and then

Code:

sudo dd if=/Users/Mladen/Desktop/kurac.bin of=/dev/rdisk3

Now everything seems to back to normal

The question still remains, why did Fedora wanna do this to my HDD!?

cheers

smr54 · #6 3rd March 2010, 05:18 PM

I'm guessing it's because of the GUID formatting. I know that fdisk and cfdisk, for example, have issues with it. (Don't ask for specifics, because I don't remember it that clearly--just remember having issues when installing over a drive that had been formatted with OS X's GUID.)

That might have been part of the issue. In the end, in my case, (but I didn't need anything on the drive), I booted with an Ubuntu CD and used its gparted to repartition.

quadmachine · #7 3rd March 2010, 05:23 PM

The point is, i never intented to install to my GUID disk, but as soon as the install started i got the message about the disk not being able to initialize by Fedora, and that it must be erased if i want it initialized.

Hmm, anyways, Fedora would mount my GUID drives normally after install I suppose? Since under Ubuntu they work without any problems?

cheers!

desertrat · #8 3rd March 2010, 06:42 PM

Fedora did it's formatting thing on the whole disk because you only have the one partition on it.
You need to partition the drive in two or more partitions of equal size, or even varying sizes with one of them as all free space.
Then tell Anaconda you want to put the Fedora installation in the free space.
BEFORE you partition the disk, back up all that stuff somewhere else.

Fedora is either EXT4 or possible lvm (it will set up a raid system of all the free space on all of the disks available to it.)
and Mac OS X is HFS+. They are not compatible. Unless you had OS X set itself up on a Unix partition, but I would be willing to bet you did not do that.

quadmachine · #9 3rd March 2010, 09:38 PM

I seem to be misunderstood.

I have three separate physical hard disk drives.

Two of them are used by OSX, and I want Fedora to have nothing to do with them. I have the third disk, on which I intented to install Fedora. However it offers to delete all data on my other drives before choosing install destination :S

Thats just weird.

desertrat · #10 3rd March 2010, 11:37 PM

Ah!

Anaconda should give you a list with checkboxes. If you know what the manufacturers are of the three disks or the size if all are different sizes, or both you can tell which on you want. Leave it checkmarked and uncheck the other two.

I did my installs over the internet from the Fedora server or mirror (mirror I think).

http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-ppc
click on all mirrors (your will be fedora-intel instead of ppc)
from the mirror list filter choose the fedora you want in the architecture you need and click on that.
I used Oregon State, because I've used them before with fine results
I'm betting you have an EFI machine
http://mirror.uoregon.edu/fedora/lin...6/os/EFI/BOOT/
you download what you need from there and
http://mirror.uoregon.edu/fedora/lin...mages/pxeboot/
what you need from here.

From this point on I can't help you with putting this stuff on your computer. On mine from the ppc link I stick on that on my root area of one of my drives and boot up open firmware, which I bet you can't do either and then from there boot into the anaconda installer.

The Anaconda installer then asks me if I want to use an URL, or a DVD or network if you by chance have it on another computer. I choose the url, punch in my ip address, netmask, dns numbers where it asks for them. Like setting up a router.
Same number sets.

Then I type in this address (cause that is what I have written down in my notebook, more than anything else):
mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/fedora/linux/releases/12/Fedora/ppc/os and hit enter. Yours should differ slightly, You prabably want i386/os instead of ppc/os
If I explained this all right it should bring up a gui installer program. And away you go!